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Recognizing industry patterns and anticipating change are core competences for today’s executives. The ability to grasp complicated phenomena and discern possible trends from seemingly random events can be a source of competitive advantage, allowing managers to capitalize on opportunities before they are apparent to others. At the operational level, technology has laid the foundation for pattern recognition by allowing companies to collect and store huge amounts of data. Wal-Mart, for example, mines the data it collects from supermarket checkouts all over the country to identify patterns in consumer tastes and behavior, knowledge that drives the company’s decisions about loyalty programs, cross-selling promotions, and even store layout.

At the strategic level, too, CEOs and their teams routinely make decisions based on the patterns they see in markets and in their competition. While most executives rely on their intuition for spotting and analyzing patterns, a few business thinkers are starting to approach the issue scientifically. In the book Profit Patterns, for instance, consultants Adrian Slywotzky and David Morrison theorize that a company’s financial performance typically follows one of 30 distinct patterns, determined by its business environment and its strategic direction.

Yet despite the growing realization that recognizing patterns is important for business, companies are far from mastering how to do it, especially at the strategic level, where the data are usually less profuse and much less precise. Pattern recognition is not a new skill, though, at least not to people outside the business world. Since antiquity, naturalists have relied on their ability to spot patterns to make sense of their surroundings. And though it may seem removed from the fast-paced world of business, bird-watching, of all the naturalists’ pasttimes, is most like business in terms of the cognitive demands pattern recognition requires. Birders have very little to go on in identifying the birds they see. Most birds, after all, are small, fast-moving creatures, whose survival often depends on their ability to escape detection. Unlike geologists or botanists, who can spend hours studying specimens, most birders have to learn to see as much as they can in a matter of seconds. The best birders, therefore, often rely on a combination of instinct and experience to determine that a particular flash of wings at such and such a place at a certain time is in fact an orange-crowned warbler.

With this in mind, HBR senior editor Diane L. Coutu turned to David Sibley and Julia Yoshida for insight into the nature and challenges of pattern recognition. The author of the birders’ bible The Sibley Guide to Birds, David Sibley is perhaps the nation’s foremost bird-watcher and illustrator. Julia Yoshida, a birder since 1965, is a physician at Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Massachusetts, another occupation that puts a premium on pattern recognition. In a joint interview at Yoshida’s home outside Boston, Sibley explained how expert birders draw on a wealth of tacit knowledge built up over the years to make split-second identifications on the basis of incomplete information. Although so fast as to be almost unconscious, the process he describes seems as methodical as one of Yoshida’s medical diagnoses. What follows is an edited and abridged transcript of their conversation.

At heart, pattern recognition is the art of finding order in often chaotic masses of data. As you go about identifying birds, just how many species are you dealing with?

Sibley: There are more than 700 breeding species in North America, and sightings of more than 900 species have been recorded. Many of the nonbreeding species that have been recorded on this continent are visitors from Siberia, the Antarctic, South America, or Europe that have made their way across the oceans only once or twice. I’ve recorded around 730 species myself.

Identifying patterns can be a terrific mental exercise. In birding, each species produces more than a dozen different songs and calls, and individuals’ plumage varies widely.

Sibley: Identification is a challenge. Among wood warblers alone, there are about 35 different species appearing regularly in the eastern United States. Each has different juvenile and adult plumage, which also varies by sex and season. So there’s a first winter male and female, a first summer male and female, an adult male and female breeding, and an adult male and female non-breeding. Some of these look very different, others quite similar. To add to the complexity, there’s variation among individual birds (no two first winter males are identical), and their plumage changes gradually. Their sounds are also quite complex. Each species has two or three different types of songs and probably eight or ten additional call notes that it uses in different situations.

Can you describe how you begin to identify patterns? In business, pattern recognition still seems to be more of an art than a science.

Sibley: Pattern finding in birding is scientific in the sense that it is very deductive. I’m aware that there are patterns out there, both in the distribution of the birds and in their appearance, and I try to fit my observations to patterns. It’s like making hypotheses and then testing them. For instance, if I find a species repeatedly in one location, I’ll try to identify what it is about that site that the bird likes and look for other locations with similar characteristics to see if I can find the same species there. Then I’ll try to relate that information to patterns that I already know from other species. Similarly, if I’m comparing two species and notice a difference in something like bill shape or feather patterns, I’ll try to check that difference on other individuals. I’ll ask myself things like, “Can I see this on all these species, all year round?” or “Can I see this at a distance?”

Yoshida: Birders are also using new information from molecular biology and field ornithology. This information expands the repertoire of possible patterns, as well as the necessary explanations for what the birds we are watching are really doing. Nowadays, for example, electronic tracking and blood analyses of migrant birds are producing new information on how birds adapt to changes in habitat and weather. This forces birders to think differently about problems than they used to. As new ways to process data emerge, new patterns are discovered.

One of the goals of pattern recognition is to quickly narrow down your set of possibilities. As birders, is there a particular thing you look for first?

Sibley: The very first questions you consider are “Where am I?” and “What time of year is it?” The answers give you a broad idea of which species are likely to be there. Next you have to look at the type of habitat the bird is in and what it’s doing within that habitat. Just with this information and the overall size of the bird, you can narrow down the likely possibilities to a handful of species. One of the examples I use in my Birding Basics book is that if you are in Concord, Massachusetts, in July and you see a little yellow bird flitting through the twigs in the trees, moving constantly, it is almost certainly a yellow warbler. All you need to see is a yellow flitting through the twigs of the trees. You know what it is because of where you are, what time of year it is, the habitat, and the fact that the bird is moving. But if you see a bright yellow bird sitting on a twig at the top of the tree, not moving for a minute or two at a time, that’s not a yellow warbler, it’s a goldfinch.

What’s the most common mistake a beginner makes in trying to identify a pattern—or, in this case, a bird?

Sibley: Beginners usually latch on to common characteristics; they focus on similarities rather than differences. For example, when I’m at the Hawk Watch at Cape May in New Jersey, people often come to me and say, “I saw a hawk with its wings folded back in a U shape and black wing tips. What would that be?” In fact, all 15 species of hawk that occur at Cape May fold their wings back in a U shape, and all have dark wing tips. What beginners should focus on are the differentiating features; if they really want to identify a hawk in flight, they need to look at the proportion of the wing to the tail; almost everything else is secondary. In general, of course, it is very important to recognize common patterns as completely and clearly as you can. But you can’t stop there. Once you’ve mastered common patterns, the real trick is to educate yourself about where discrepancies are most likely to appear—and to concentrate your attention on those areas.

How do you spot an unusual pattern?

Sibley: Typically, I’ve already defined a particular pattern before I go looking for specific features. But then there are many times when I get the sense that something is different, and I take time to explore that difference because it could mean something. I’ll be sketching sandpipers, for instance, and after I’ve sketched a few, I’ll think, “This species looks a little bit more slender somehow than that one.” Then I’ll study the birds more carefully to figure out whether it’s longer legs or longer wings or a longer neck that makes it look more slender. And so in the process of my study, different patterns gradually emerge. The more you observe, the more you learn.

In medical diagnosis, pattern recognition is a key skill. Julia, how do birding skills translate into your work as a physician?

Yoshida: Medical diagnosis, like birding, involves recognizing different patterns. The other day, for example, a woman—an ex-smoker—came to see me complaining that she’d had a cold for a month. Since colds normally go away in a couple of weeks, this was clearly not a pattern for a cold. So I asked the patient for more data. It turns out her symptoms persisted despite a course of antibiotics. This made a bacterial infection less likely, but the information could still fit a number of other patterns including a virus, an allergy, or even cancer. Eventually, I found out that things were worse for my patient during the week than on weekends. As it turned out, the cleaners were trying out a new product in the office where my patient worked.

It’s fascinating to me how similar the diagnostic process is to birding. In birding, I group information into different patterns. Then I look at the markings, which, like the symptoms of an illness, could indicate various possibilities. For example, a warbler with drab olive coloring could be a Cape May or an orange-crowned warbler or a palm warbler. But if the bird pumps its tail, then I know it’s a palm. Of course in medicine, you can do something you can’t do in birding: You can conduct a physical diagnostic exam, which for the woman with the cough supported my initial diagnosis of an allergy.

One of the toughest challenges in pattern recognition is knowing when you’ve looked at enough information to make a reliable judgment. At what point can you be certain that the pattern you’ve identified is real?

Sibley: Identification is never 100% certain. Even field marks aren’t completely dependable, so you have to have an idea of how reliable each mark is or how reliable your judgment of it is, how well you saw it. Say I saw a long bill on a bird, for instance; that’s only 70% or 80% reliable as a mark. Or maybe I think I saw a long tail, which is a reliable mark, but I didn’t get a good look at it. You put all your information together and say, “OK, there are three 90% characteristics that point this way and a couple of 50% or 70% characteristics that point that way, so I’ll go to the 90% side.” The identification may or may not be correct, but that’s the more likely choice. The more you observe and add bits of evidence, the more certain the identification gets. But you should never kid yourself that you’ve achieved complete certainty.

Yoshida: The accuracy of a pattern is something that interests me very much as a doctor because in medicine the stakes are so high. In fact, weighing the probability of a particular pattern being right is perhaps the biggest challenge a doctor faces. One way of improving our chances is to implement redundancy in data collection. A doctor will develop not one but several likely diagnoses based on a patient’s story. These diagnoses are then ranked, and a physical exam and laboratory tests are conducted to support or discredit each diagnosis. And then, of course, in medicine, we can always review the literature or ask a specialist to consult. The result, ideally, is that we come up with patterns that are really quite reliable and actionable. I would assume that a similar process is possible in deciphering business patterns.

When you’re looking at all the data, you’re sorting out patterns that may fit your theory. But there must be other patterns you have to ignore. So how do you choose?

Sibley: That’s not an easy question to answer. It’s inconsistencies that make me stop and think. One time when I was banding birds at Manomet Bird Observatory in Massachusetts, I came across one that I thought just didn’t fit standard descriptions. Everybody said, “Oh, here’s a blackpoll warbler,” which is tricky to identify in the fall. But the more I looked at it, the more oddities I saw. After a few minutes, it occurred to me that it might be a hybrid, an unusual cross between a blackpoll warbler and something else. I tried to get other people to take notice of it, saying, “Look at the crown, there’s yellow hidden on the crown. And there’s a yellow tinge on the rump; these things don’t add up.” But it was a busy day. People were anxious to move on, so it was banded as a blackpoll warbler and released.

Does randomness have a role to play in birding?

Sibley: Occasionally, individual birds migrate the wrong way and show up as vagrant outside their normal range. When they migrate, most seem to go in a random direction a random distance from the places they were born. But interestingly, even then these vagrant birds tend to show up in places that have a pattern of rare birds turning up. So they’re probably not random occurrences but a pattern we haven’t worked out yet.

You have the reputation, David, of being able to identify rare birds very quickly. Does intuition play a key role in your identification—or is it something else?

Sibley: There have been times when I’ve been out birding and have just gotten a strong sense that there might be something unusual around, that I was about to find a rare bird, and sure enough there’s a rare bird. The expectation probably comes from deep knowledge—from a sense of the place, the weather conditions, the other species that are around. Last fall, I was in Galveston, Texas, and I was leading a bird walk for 20 or so people in the local Audubon chapter. We went out to the beachfront for an hour to look at birds roosting. And as we were heading out there, I was thinking to myself, “OK, we’re going to see all these common Texas gulf coast birds, so what would be something interesting that I can look for? What would be a logical rare bird to find here?” And I thought of the elegant tern. I had been in Florida around the time that one had been sighted there, and so it was on my mind that it would be an exciting bird to find. We went out and parked ourselves next to a flock of about 50 birds resting on the beach. I put up my binoculars, and the second or third bird I looked at was an elegant tern. It was the second sighting ever recorded in Texas, so it was a very rare bird and not at all likely to be there. But I was looking for it. You find rare birds if you’re looking for them. I made a conscious decision that an elegant tern was a possibility and then looked for it. You can call this intuition if you like, but then this is intuition based on years of experience.

So sometimes recognizing patterns is a matter of anticipating them?

Yoshida: Yes, and there’s a parallel in medicine. I spend a lot of time thinking about it because I teach medical students from Harvard and Tufts. Typically, a student will look at a patient first and then come tell me what he or she thinks. Afterward, we both go in and examine the patient, and then we step out and talk about the patient’s condition. Students often tell me that I’m very intuitive because I diagnose with little to go on and before I’ve seen a patient. But I tell them, “It’s really not intuition. When you were telling me the first piece of information, I was thinking this. Then you told me a little bit more, and I was listening to every little detail, refining my preliminary diagnosis.” Recognizing a pattern involves knowing what to look for, what the possibilities are, and then sorting out those patterns when you are actually confronted with the patient. I don’t think it’s a eureka moment at all. It’s a methodical process. The more you have in your head, the more you’ll see and hear.

Similarly, in birding, familiarity with features enables a person to identify a bird very quickly, without seeing much of it. The beginner birder typically likes to see everything, but skilled birders don’t have to. Just a shadow with a pattern may be enough of a clue for them to make the identification. That works in birding because the stakes are different and one chance may be all you’ll get.

Honesty about data is an important quality in people who make decisions based on patterns they recognize. It’s said that birders are scrupulously honest about the sightings they record. Is that true?

Sibley: For most people, bird-watching is a personal challenge, so there isn’t a lot of incentive to be dishonest. You’d only be cheating yourself. Besides, if you’re dishonest, you’re going to be discovered and ostracized. Bird-watchers who repeatedly claim that they’ve seen rare birds when they haven’t are quickly found out. There are official committees that rule on these things, and there’s also an unofficial cadre of top-notch birders who pass judgment on important sightings—not so much to police the watchers as to be sure that the sightings are good. After all, people reporting false sightings may actually believe that they saw what they needed to see in order to identify a particular bird. Having convinced themselves, they’ll dig in their heels. The more they’re questioned, the more adamant they become.

I think some managers will recognize that kind of behavior. Let me ask you, though, who acts as the pattern finder’s judge? For instance, who judges you, David?

Sibley: I judge myself. I’ve had records that I’ve submitted to committees that have been rejected. I’ve also misidentified birds. When I was writing the field guide, I pulled out all my old notes from ten or 15 years earlier and found a number of photographs of birds that I could see weren’t what I had thought they were. I also discovered a couple of very rare birds in my sketches that I hadn’t identified at the time. One bird I’d sketched in California years ago and hadn’t recognized I was able to identify as an Arctic loon. At the time I saw it, no one had sighted an Arctic loon in California before. I haven’t submitted the record to the California Records Committee—I’m not sure how they would respond to a report of a bird identified from a sketch years after it was sighted. But I know now that what I saw was, in fact, an Arctic loon.

If you had to train someone to be a good pattern finder, what would you focus on?

Sibley: A couple of the key things that I would stress would be self-awareness and self-criticism. The lack of ego is also an extremely important trait in a pattern finder because you have to be able to go back and review the decisions you made a year or two ago and admit where you were wrong. Sometimes new experiences just don’t fit the patterns you thought you observed before. But you can’t be defensive and cling to the identifications you made in the past because that will only obscure the newer patterns that are turning up as you learn more. So in this sense, the first lesson of birding is that mistakes are an opportunity for learning.

Even when you reach my level of experience, you’re still learning and seeing new things. These days, I study local patterns of occurrence. I go to places like Cape May or Monterey, California, and I document when, where, and in what numbers specific species turn up. It’s a thrill to see a bird that’s unusual for that time of year or for that location. The ultimate experience for me is seeing a bird I’ve never seen before in a place where I never thought it would be—it’s even more exciting if a rare sighting happens in a place you go to all the time. Figuring out what the bird is involves trashing all your expectations. You have to recognize it as something different and not try to fit it into your existing patterns.

What attracts people to birding? Is it the adventure of pattern recognition?

Sibley: For some people, it’s just an excuse to get outdoors. In many cases, though, people get interested because of some childhood experience. They were out in their yard, they saw a bird that looked odd or that they’d never noticed before, and they went and looked it up in a book or a grown-up helped them find the picture of it in a book. People often tell me that they were just amazed by the idea that these birds have names, that there are specific kinds of birds with specific characteristics, that there’s a logic to it all.

For me personally, the greatest satisfaction comes from making a discovery that reveals a whole pattern; it’s like finding the piece of a jigsaw puzzle that links the two halves together. I’ll be studying some birds and trying to figure out how to tell young from old, and I’ll suddenly find a feature that applies across a whole group of species. Thanks to that feature, I can now distinguish between adult and immature birds not only in this one species but also in 20 others. Discoveries of that kind put things into order, and the fact that there are patterns in the world—that it’s not just chaos—is very reassuring.

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